Who is moving clubs for fall 2019?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was going to, because I felt that my son's coach could not maintain discipline over the kids, but I feel like he has made a change and that things have improved, so we are staying where we are.

I'm not trashing you, but this is the problem with travel soccer. Most of us talk about coming and going before tryouts even start. It should be ID the teams first, tryout, offer made/not, and them decide. Wish clubs would actually do a real tryout and not just take the kids from the previous year and add a few. We use to be in a club in LA and the tryout scouts were not connected to the coach/team directly. They would just group the kids into the levels, no favoritism, all had to work to earn/reearn their spots.

Rule number 1 in business: don’t alienate your paying customers. Rule number 2: always look to improve your product and marketing (ie in this case team’s record and player quality). These two rules working together (sometime in conflict) result in what we have today with “tryouts”. In other words, if you can recruit behind the scenes to get better players while mollifying those that you want to keep and not replace a paying customer until you have a good handle on a replacement then you are doing well from a business perspective. And yes, travel soccer is a business. Our kids are the employees and the clubs and coaches are the beneficiaries. Yes, we pay for the right to have our kids work for them. But, our kids do get some benefits (the job is fun, they get exercise, they learn about competition, success, and failure, and on a rare occasion they get a scholarship). As long as you go into this whole process with your eyes wide open you’ll be fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was going to, because I felt that my son's coach could not maintain discipline over the kids, but I feel like he has made a change and that things have improved, so we are staying where we are.

I'm not trashing you, but this is the problem with travel soccer. Most of us talk about coming and going before tryouts even start. It should be ID the teams first, tryout, offer made/not, and them decide. Wish clubs would actually do a real tryout and not just take the kids from the previous year and add a few. We use to be in a club in LA and the tryout scouts were not connected to the coach/team directly. They would just group the kids into the levels, no favoritism, all had to work to earn/reearn their spots.

Rule number 1 in business: don’t alienate your paying customers. Rule number 2: always look to improve your product and marketing (ie in this case team’s record and player quality). These two rules working together (sometime in conflict) result in what we have today with “tryouts”. In other words, if you can recruit behind the scenes to get better players while mollifying those that you want to keep and not replace a paying customer until you have a good handle on a replacement then you are doing well from a business perspective. And yes, travel soccer is a business. Our kids are the employees and the clubs and coaches are the beneficiaries. Yes, we pay for the right to have our kids work for them. But, our kids do get some benefits (the job is fun, they get exercise, they learn about competition, success, and failure, and on a rare occasion they get a scholarship). As long as you go into this whole process with your eyes wide open you’ll be fine.

Travel soccer is a business, but yet packages itself as a non-profit. It should be a business making business decisions and that means you employ the best possible players, the issue is that these are community organizations which is why need to play these games called tryouts.

[Anonymous]

I heard Emma is switching clubs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I heard Emma is switching clubs.

Also Ella.

[Anonymous]

I heard Mia is coming to the club.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was going to, because I felt that my son's coach could not maintain discipline over the kids, but I feel like he has made a change and that things have improved, so we are staying where we are.

I'm not trashing you, but this is the problem with travel soccer. Most of us talk about coming and going before tryouts even start. It should be ID the teams first, tryout, offer made/not, and them decide. Wish clubs would actually do a real tryout and not just take the kids from the previous year and add a few. We use to be in a club in LA and the tryout scouts were not connected to the coach/team directly. They would just group the kids into the levels, no favoritism, all had to work to earn/reearn their spots.

Tryouts are a horrible way to pick a team. Some of the best girls I have seen are horrible at tryouts. It's specially true for the play makers. Tryouts are a crap shoot.

[Anonymous]

Not PP,

On the girls side, there is no way to get enough talented girls to a tryout to supplant the current majority of the roster for many reasons. It would take days or weeks of tryouts to identify appropriate players, especially if they were playing out of role or had years of incompetent coaches playing them where they needed by the team and not to the individual.

[Anonymous]

I was going to, because I felt that my son's coach could not maintain discipline over the kids, but I feel like he has made a change and that things have improved, so we are staying where we are.


I'm not trashing you, but this is the problem with travel soccer. Most of us talk about coming and going before tryouts even start. It should be ID the teams first, tryout, offer made/not, and them decide. Wish clubs would actually do a real tryout and not just take the kids from the previous year and add a few. We use to be in a club in LA and the tryout scouts were not connected to the coach/team directly. They would just group the kids into the levels, no favoritism, all had to work to earn/reearn their spots.


Tryouts are a horrible way to pick a team. Some of the best girls I have seen are horrible at tryouts. It's specially true for the play makers. Tryouts are a crap shoot.

OP here, and I'm confident he'll either get his spot back or get a spot on the team one level down. He played well this season, and frankly, since both DH and I work full time and we don't have family in the area, there's really only one or two other clubs we could consider in terms of driving distance, and both would be much more inconvenient for us. We may have him try out at those one or two other places, but unless something goes terribly wrong and he somehow gets no spot at his current club, he's playing there, because it works better for our family.

There's a reason that clubs take back kids from previous years who played well and know the club's system. They're a known quantity. Granted, someone else can look good at tryouts, but they're an unknown, and the club really doesn't even know if they're serious about taking the spot, or just hoping to get an offer from a higher level team than where they're currently at.

[Anonymous]

I have a list of reasons for moving, most of which are football or club management related, but to be honest, the BIGGEST reason we will be moving is due to traffic. At the level our kid is playing at, there are a number of clubs closer to our home which will be easier to get to and hopefully provide at or near the same level of play from our current side.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a list of reasons for moving, most of which are football or club management related, but to be honest, the BIGGEST reason we will be moving is due to traffic. At the level our kid is playing at, there are a number of clubs closer to our home which will be easier to get to and hopefully provide at or near the same level of play from our current side.

This. The traffic is a real b*tch in this area. We are like you with only 1-2 Club options. We have Clubs that are only 8-15 miles away --but will take 45 minutes to 1 hour due to rush hour traffic patterns. We have a Club that is 30 miles away that predictably takes us 30-35 minutes, very little traffic at all. There is no rhyme or reason.

[Anonymous]

Traffic is the reason we are staying at our current club. It is 5 minutes from our house. We have 10 other clubs to choose from within 10 miles (Fairfax County), but I can't justify the extra time spent in the car. I spend enough time in the car already commuting. So we will stay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Traffic is the reason we are staying at our current club. It is 5 minutes from our house. We have 10 other clubs to choose from within 10 miles (Fairfax County), but I can't justify the extra time spent in the car. I spend enough time in the car already commuting. So we will stay.

I completely get it. I feel this is why Clubs get away with treating kids like sh*t----for many they know they are the only game in town and people aren't going to leave no matter how bad it gets.

[Anonymous]

Talented players leave those situations.

[Anonymous]

Mia, Emma, and ellla can go to hell. Traitors!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I heard Mia is coming to the club.

Oh shit- mia the striker or mia the goalie